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Sweetbreads, White
Soak, blanch, and cool the sweetbreads in the usual way. Put into a saucepan of a size to hold them conveniently, but no larger, as much white stock as will barely cover the sweetbreads. Thicken this with white roux or with a little flour and butter, add a bunch of parsley, a small onion, and a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Let it simmer two or three minutes, then add two table-spoonfuls of thick cream. Put in the sweetbreads, and let them simmer in the sauce until done enough. Take the herbs out of the sauce, let it cool a minute, then mix a spoonful of it with the yolk of an egg. Add this gradually to the rest of the sauce, stir it until it is smooth, then put the sweetbreads on a dish, and pour the sauce over them. Garnish with parsley and lemon, or with a few mushrooms. If liked, the egg yolk may be omitted, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice may be added to the sauce, which should be rather highly seasoned. White dishes should not be insipid; though delicate, they should be piquant. Time, half an hour to simmer the sweetbreads. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. to 5s. each. Sufficient, one sweetbread for two persons.
A classic white blanquette treatment, and the one line that matters is the last step: once the egg yolk goes in, the sauce must not boil. Hold it below a simmer or it will curdle and break the whole point of the dish.
- "The usual way"The book assumes you know the preliminary: soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for two to three hours until the water runs clear, blanch five minutes in barely simmering salted water, then plunge into cold water. While cold, peel off the outer membrane and any gristle, and press between two plates under a weight so they cook evenly.
- Which sweetbreadVeal sweetbreads are almost certainly what is intended, and the heart (round) one is generally preferred; the throat sweetbread is stringier. Order ahead from a butcher. A veal heart sweetbread of around 8-12 oz would support the book's yield of one for two people; lamb sweetbreads are far smaller, so allow three or four per person.
- Simmering timeHalf an hour suits a whole pressed veal sweetbread of good size. Smaller or sliced pieces are done in 12-18 minutes, and they are ready when a skewer meets no resistance at the centre. Overcooked sweetbreads turn dense and grainy rather than tender.
- White roux, and how muchEqual weights butter and flour cooked a minute or two without colouring. For roughly a cup of stock, use about a tablespoon each; the sauce should coat, not set. Two or three minutes of simmering is the minimum to lose the raw flour taste.
- White stockA pale veal or chicken stock, unsalted and unbrowned. Bought low-sodium chicken stock works; avoid anything dark or heavily seasoned, since the finished sauce is meant to be ivory.
- Tempering the yolkTake the pan off the heat, let it stand a minute, stir a spoonful of hot sauce into the yolk, then return the mixture to the pan off the heat and stir until glossy. Do not put it back over flame. If you take the alternative given and skip the yolk, add the lemon juice at the very end so the cream does not split.
- SeasoningThe instruction that white dishes should be piquant rather than insipid is the author's own, and it is sound: this sauce needs more salt than you expect, a good grating of nutmeg, and either the lemon juice or a squeeze from the garnish at the table.
- Cost and quantityThe 1s. 6d. to 5s. each reflects sweetbreads as a luxury offal; the reason for so wide a range is not given. One veal sweetbread with sauce serves two as a first course, or as a light lunch with rice or plain toast to take the sauce.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and pancreas of a young animal, never anything to do with bread or sugar; the origin of the name is uncertain, though "bread" is often connected to an Old English word for flesh or roast meat — occupied a peculiar place in the Victorian kitchen. They were expensive, highly perishable, and prized precisely for the mild, creamy texture that made them suitable for invalids and for the delicate white entrées that filled the middle of a formal dinner. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery is a later issue of the Cassell's cookery dictionary first compiled in the 1870s; being a dictionary, it groups dishes under their main ingredient, so several sweetbread treatments stand together, this white version among them — essentially a small blanquette finished with a liaison of cream and egg yolk in the standard French manner. The closing remark that white dishes "should be piquant" reads as a quiet corrective to the era's reputation for blandness.